Strengthen Your Data Security with Access Control

Not everyone has access to a bank vault, and the same should be true of your business data. The best way to protect sensitive information is to make it available to appropriate parties only. For example, does a customer support rep need access to financial records? No – it’s not relevant to their job and creates potential pathways to a security breach.

In today’s mobile work environment, data moves between on-premises servers, the Cloud, and onto any device that employees use. The challenge is to lower risk by implementing policies that authorize specific users to view, edit, and share data. Here are some ideas on how to get started.

1. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

“Authentication is a technique used to verify that someone is who they claim to be. What’s needed is an additional layer, authorization, which determines whether a user should be allowed to access the data or make the transaction they’re attempting.”

In a perfect world, passwords would be more than sufficient to secure against unauthorized access.

Unfortunately, cybercriminals are determined to break through that barrier. Two-Factor (or Multi-Factor) Authentication makes employees provide additional proof that they are who they say they are (entering a code sent via email or text). Your IT staff can easily incorporate and manage 2FA using Azure Active Directory, ensuring all local and remote users are uniquely identified before data access is granted.

2. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

As I mentioned in my example in the first paragraph, not all employees need access to all kinds of information. Using an RBAC solution, you can assign specific permissions to different departments or positions, or even set up temporary approval for projects. Group permissions are easier to manage than individual ones, and largely eliminates the chance of error.

3. Automated Onboarding

Managing user permissions with automation helps close the data loss loophole. Start by creating a comprehensive inventory of your employees and add new hires to a preset group (add an engineer to the Engineer Permissions Group). The same strategy will streamline offboarding too, as you can simply remove the employee from the group on their last day.

Set up a dynamic access control solution to safeguard your data against internal and external threats. For help in implementing any of these methods, lean on the professionals at Iserv. Give us a call at 407-530-0839 to learn more!